As Donald Trump repositions the United States in the war in Ukraine, the Republican president and his administration have already taken a great many steps to assist our Russian adversaries, including halting military aid to our Ukrainian allies and terminating an initiative to protect Ukraine’s energy grid.
There were rumors that the White House would take yet another dramatic step in the same direction and curtail U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Those rumors were true: The Trump administration confirmed that intelligence sharing has been paused for an undetermined length of time. The New York Times reported that the president’s decision “could reorder the battlefield, either halting the fight or potentially giving Russia a decisive advantage.”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, went further, arguing that this one move from Trump “will cost lives.”
Complicating matters, the problem isn’t just intelligence coming out of the White House, it’s also intelligence going into the White House. NBC News reported:
Some U.S. allies are considering scaling back the intelligence they share with Washington in response to the Trump administration’s conciliatory approach to Russia, four sources with direct knowledge of the discussions told NBC News. The allies are weighing the move because of concerns about safeguarding foreign assets whose identities could inadvertently be revealed, said the sources, who included a foreign official.
The network’s sources said the reassessment of intelligence sharing protocols is driven, at least in part, by “the Trump administration’s warming relations with Russia.”
Or put another way, it sounds as if some countries — traditional U.S. allies — worry that if they share sensitive information with Trump and his team, it might work its way back to Moscow.
Politico published a related report this week, noting that intelligence sharing among NATO countries “is in danger,” as foreign officials “wonder about the risk of sharing intelligence with Washington.”
We’ve been moving quickly toward this point since Trump won a second term. When the Republican announced, for example, that he wanted Tulsi Gabbard, who has a habit of echoing Russian propaganda, to be the director of national intelligence, Time magazine reported that some foreign officials expressed concern about sharing intelligence with the administration with her in office. (She has since reportedly taken steps to privately reassure allies with concerns.)
In January, Shane Harris had a related report in The Atlantic that raised the same point: “Several foreign intelligence officials have recently told me that they are taking steps to limit how much sensitive intelligence they share with the Trump administration, for fear that it might be leaked or used for political ends.”
But as Trump aligns the White House with the Kremlin, the fears about the trustworthiness of the American president appear to have reached a striking new level.
It’s difficult, of course, to blame traditional U.S. allies for being concerned. Not only is Trump cozying up to Moscow in ways his own former aides are struggling to understand, but the Republican is also haunted by a track record that includes mishandling classified documents and blurting out secrets for reasons unknown. Indeed, around this time eight years ago, Trump welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak into the Oval Office — at Vladimir Putin’s request — for a visit that was never fully explained. As part of the get-together, Trump reportedly revealed highly classified information to his Russian guests for reasons that have never been explained. “This is code-word information,” a U.S. official told The Washington Post at the time. The president “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.” Is it really any wonder why, eight years later, foreign countries would think twice about sharing intelligence with Trump and his controversial team?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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